Sleep
by Creecree
Summary: Draco doesn't remember, and Harry hopes.


**NOTICES** The Harry Potter empire belongs to JK Rowling. This is merely a work of imaginative fiction based on the series. This contains M/M, D/H. Read at own discretion.

**MORE NOTICES** It felt strange writing this piece. I don't know where it came from.

**Sleep**

He feels the rest of him _not_ feel, the stiff heavy weight of his arms by his side, his leaden legs lying uselessly on the bed. He doesn't seem to know why he has gotten himself into such a state, and such a place. Draco blinks and tries to remember things. He doesn't get much, but a particular sweet, sticky smell that reminds him of sleep and safety. _Sleep_. He wonders for a moment, and forcibly relaxes, decides to shut his eyes.

On the back of his eyelids, he sees his arms around a body with a blank face.

-

Rain hasn't fallen for the past few days, and Draco wants to tell himself that it is a good sign. He needs the _goodness_- he feels undeniably alone. He consoles himself with arbitrary thoughts because he can sense himself sinking into something dark and deep and far away. And he doesn't want to go there.

-

The box with the small moving people sits blankly across him, silent. Outside is but a fog of monotonous whitenoise. Hearing only his heartbeat, Draco feels wrong and intrusive in the room and tries to hold his breath to keep himself quiet. A few minutes later, when he sees spots his eyes and something starts to beep, he panics and it all gets worse. People in white rush in, checking, touching him and they are all faces and hands he doesn't recognise, languages he has never heard before. Draco struggles to keep up with their questions, his answers are pathetic whimpers of frustration and pain. He tries to tell them things with his eyes, he really does, but they are too busy trying not to cry.

-

'Draco,'

His name rolls heavily out of the strangely familiar voice and Draco opens his eyes, and turns his neck slowly. He sees a man sitting in the normally unused visitors' chair, his eyes red and face tired, thin. So much _despair_- Draco wants to reach out to him and push up the corners of his mouth into a smile.

'I'm sorry I couldn't find you sooner,'

Draco doesn't understand, and doesn't pretend to.

'Vol-Voldemort is gone,'

He feels a spike of fear at the name, but he cannot justify it with a memory, so he lets it go. He chooses to study the man instead, a small, black haired one, the furtive small smile matching the clenched hands in his lap.

'We are safe now,'

_Safe?_ Draco begins to feel his pulse quicken, his head hurting with questions. The man seems to be speaking a string of unrelated, unexplanatory statements. Draco blinks a few times, trying to construct a sentence that might convey what exactly he needed to know.

'Let me take you home,'

Draco's eyes widen at that. The audacity of this, _person_, to just come in and wanting to whisk him away-

'Draco? Why- what do you think?'

Draco urgently sums up his confusion in a sentence and utters it slowly, but surely.

'Who are you?'

A reply doesn't come as expected. Baffled, Draco watches the man in front of him shatter.

-

When Draco wakes up, he is not in the white room with the scratchy bed sheets anymore. He wakes up to pleasant beiges and sage colours that make him feel warm and fuzzy inside. He knows, somehow, that the man from yesterday has made this happen, but decides that since he is not in pain, or dead, he shouldn't care. Unconsciously, he smiles, before snuggling back into the blankets and going back to sleep.

-

'Draco,'

He turns away from the window he has been looking out from to the doorway, where the man is, standing uncertainly with his hands in his pockets.

'We're home- _you're_ home,'

Draco cocks his head slightly, thinking it over. He doesn't remember this room, or the beautiful scenery outside. It may be the man's home, but is it his? He watches a myriad of expressions flit across the man's face, a hope, and sadness, and then again the desperate, fierce hope.

'Am I?' Draco asks carefully.

The man's shoulders visibly sag. He stands there motionless for a second, watching Draco, before walking towards the bed. He sits at the corner of it, his eyes never leaving Draco's. Draco bites his lip against the loss and sadness he sees in those eyes, but he refuses to look away.

'I'm Harry,' a whisper.

'Well hello then, Harry. And thank you, I think. For all- this,'

The man, _Harry_, just shakes his head, smiling peculiarly. He lifts Draco's hand and kisses his palm, then places it on his own cheek, nuzzling into it. Draco watches in a sort of wonder, as Harry's face rests into something resembling contentment and joy. He doesn't understand it, but doesn't ask and just looks on. He feels like he should be part of it, _this_, but for now, it seemed like his mere physical presence is enough for Harry.

-

The first time Draco wakes up screaming, Harry rushes in with his glasses in one hand and ridiculously rumpled hair. Draco feels like laughing at the sight despite the bitter, coiling fear in his stomach and doesn't get a chance to even sneer at him as he throws up violently onto the bedroom floor. Harry helps him into the bathroom and gets the room totally cleaned up by the time Draco has stopped coughing up bile into the toilet. He doesn't complain or smirk at Draco for his embarrassing stunt and Draco feels mean for wanting to laugh earlier.

He reaches for Harry's arm as he is leaving and asks if Harry can sleep with him tonight. He admits verbally that he is afraid. Harry makes quick work of his dressing gown and slips into the bed, shuddering even though the night was particularly warm. Draco finds the weight of Harry's head pleasant and comforting on his chest, and falls asleep dreaming of lightning and wet kisses in the rain. A whisper of a promise- for something that sounded like forever.

-

_A few years later:_

Draco sits on the chair at the front lawn, and laughs, watching Harry struggle with a 'grill', he calls it, the smell of sausages wafting deliciously in the open air. He just sits, sipping on his lemon something, the weather calm and unobtrusive.

Quiet. Safe.

But Harry once told him that he _isn't_ fine, that he has forgotten things. He is right.

He doesn't remember Voldemort. He doesn't remember school. He doesn't remember Dumbledore. He doesn't remember his parents. He doesn't remember how he got his arms to be sluggish, his legs easily fatigued. But he feels empty of the need to know such things. His world is decidedly small, he can grasp all of its tethers in one hand, and he holds Harry's in the other. It is enough and he is suitably occupied, he lives to understand Harry and all of his little ways, just because Harry seems to know all of Draco's and more.

He doesn't remember, true, but he _knows_. He knows that he has fallen into another person, into Harry and all of his shy touches. He knows that Harry takes care of him, makes tea for him when he wakes up crying and he doesn't understand why, brings him to see Ron and Hermione and their small children Rose and Fred, coaxes him onto a broom and he flies.

He flies and flies and he is freer than he can ever imagine feeling and isn't afraid anymore to go far, because he knows that when he returns, there will always be Harry, waiting for him at home.


End file.
